1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to a planter box, and particularly, to a detachable and collapsible planter box being of a pallet box assembly which provides a durable but detachable and reusable container box having structural features of a pallet.
2. Description of Related Art
There has been a trend in various local communities towards gardening using planter boxes. Indeed, planter boxes are a popular choice for gardening in small confined spaces. The planter box can be used to grow flowers, herbs, and vegetables in areas such as decks, patios, and balconies. The planter box can be made of a cedar box supported by a wood frame. Since cedar has good outdoor rot resistance, it has become a good choice for planter boxes. It is also untreated which means that toxins won't leach out of the cedar box into the vegetables. Some larger-sized planter boxes can be used to house larger plantings, such as trees and shrubs. A planter box may even have wheels for easy mobility. Other than cedar and redwood, planter boxes can be made of various other materials, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic. Over the years, there are numerous do-it-yourself (DIY) planter boxes built by many people, typically using wood materials for such projects. However, these wooden planter boxes typically takes significant time to fabricate, degrades over an extended period of time due to weathering, cannot be disassembled or detached, and some of the panels cannot be removed or disassembled during normal usage. Meanwhile, most of the commercially available plastic planter boxes are also typically not detachable or removable. In addition, both the wooden and the plastic commercially available planter boxes do not have sufficient structural features that would allow for the use of pallet jacks or hand trucks for transporting of the planter box during normal use. Other issues commonly faced are that traditional methods of removing plants from traditional planters often cause damage to the plants and containers. In fact, larger commercial planters are often simply destroyed and damage the roots during the process of removing large plants, such as trees for example. Although some conventional planter boxes have been available to the market with removable side panels, they do not integrate a method for easy transportation such as a pallet or integrated wheels. Indeed nurseries often place large planters directly on top of a pallet thus creating unnecessary work without the benefit of binding the planter to the pallet or having a collapsible and reusable planter.
In the conventional art relating to collapsible planter boxes, there is not a collapsible planter box that is commercially available which provides an adequate method to protect the germinated plant from frost, birds, or pests via a plastic green house or protective bird or bug netting. Meanwhile, although there are many products on the market to help facilitate the germination of seed and growing them into mature plants, there are no integrated systems which are useful and effective at all stages of growth of the plant from seedling all the way to a mature plant.
Therefore, there is a need in the industry for an improved reusable planter box with capabilities of providing convenient removal of one or more of the panels thereof without having the entire planter box collapsing during use, and offering improved transporting stability during handling by using a fork truck, forklift, hand pallet jack, or hand truck.